Serial or pamphlet - U Decide!
THE BEAT - Is the pamphlet the future of comics?
Some interesting thoughts here, and in the comments section that follows. I'll post some on this once I get the taxes paid and perhaps have a little lunch.
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Okay, my debt owed to the state is taken care of. For this year. Sigh.
Like I said, interesting discussion above, and it's tough to nail it down to just one subject, because it very quickly dovetails into other issues that are related, but tangential to the main one brought up above, which is that it's difficult, nay nearly impossible to expect a comics artist to live off the advances of a graphic novel long enough to create said graphic novel because there are typically no advances. (For those of you wondering, an advance is "advance paid against royalties earned", money paid by the publisher before the book in question is published, or sometimes even before it's created. And often it's the only money that the author(s) see out of the book in question.
Of course, in comics, we don't usually see advances. That's reserved for "real" book publishers. Let's not even get into the fact that advances are often pretty damn small and not enough to live off of unless you're living out in the desert in a shack with bootlegged power and internet connection. But in comics, we don't even get those, typically. So, asking someone to come up with 120 pages of material and *maybe* they'll get paid at the end of it is pretty crazy. But then sometimes folks do crazy things for love.
My guess is that a lot of this comes from a culture of work-for-hire that the mainstream American comics have lived with for...well forever really. Yes, we've made great strides in creator ownership, etc, but still the underlying foundation was "do the work and you get a check." No advances, but then we're talking about monthly magazine publication, long before the world of the trade surpassing pamphlet sales. The big publishers love monthlies because their outlay is spread out over a series of months instead of being passed out in giant chunks before the book is created. Creators like to get paid on a regular basis, and frankly, I can't blame them. Of course, there's the whole double-dipping thing that allows the same material to meet a greater marketplace for only the price of reprinting it (not unlike manga coming over to the states, only there's the translation issue to deal with in terms of an added cost).
Most readers I know don't like monthlies because they don't deliver a satisfying experience. Generally they're half of an act of a larger story with a twist at the end (at least you hope there's a twist or really you're feeling kind of cheated.) The unit of story is actually the trade (and this gets even mistier with manga, because I've come across volumes of manga that just sorta stop and you're expected to continue in another couple of months when the next one comes out.) But without the monthly to subsidize the trade, the publishers have to work a lot harder and the unit price goes up. An excellent point made by "Anonymous" on the Beat points out that it costs almost as much to print a pamphlet as a trade, when all is said and done. The real cost derives from the intellectual property (ie, the pretty pictures and words on the page -- the raw material cost is pretty much fixed.)
So, just jump in and do pamphlets and not worry about the trade, since it's all a sunk cost. Well, that's great, only in this marketplace, monthlies tend to shed sales pretty regularly (assuming you're an indie, and even if you're one of the big guys.) Of course, you still have to come up with a way to pay for the initial content that you want to print up. Which leads us right back to the issue of paying creators enough so that they can keep the bounty of ramen and head cheese flowing (or tofu if you're vegan...or hate head cheese, like myself). I suppose there's a potential solution in creators simply being offered advances, but the publishers would have to make enough money to actually do that (and really, most of them can't afford even the most basic advertising, he said, looking over Diamond's rate sheets for pages in PREVIEWS.)
But we can't grow the market until we have some money to spend to grow the market. Man, my head's beginning to spin here. Right now, the market is structured such that everything is oriented around the dribs and drabs of outlay that drives the pamphlet market. But folks who don't come into comics stores aren't ready for pamphlets because they're used to reading a book at one time (as opposed to TV, which they're accustomed to watch in episodes). And we're back to the ourobous.
What about internet publishing? Works great for GIRL GENIUS! I like Phil Foglio, and I have for twenty odd years. He's had a long career in print and has a sizable fanbase who know his work and seek it out. You see where I'm going with this? I'm not saying that internet fame can't be translated into a steady paycheck in the real world, it can. Just look at PENNY ARCADE. But they're head and shoulders the exception and not yet the rule. Not saying it won't happen either. However, it's a not a slamdunk and as easy as opening up a website with a tipjar.
The question is what else can be done to change the marketplace? And that also means, how can the presentation of comics be altered in such a way as to appeal to a wider audience. And without financial risk so the big publishers can just shift over to the new paradigm overnight?
Okay, that last one isn't happening. But the others are certainly still up for discussion.